Kerry Sanders: What I learned from living in Peru
Posted: Tuesday, June 16, 2009 3:18 PM by Vidya Rao
From NBC News correspondent Kerry Sanders
Hip is something I’m not.
I like to think I’m not a total square but when I started working on a story about Hispanics and pop culture, I will admit I was unaware of Ozomatli.
Their music is now on my iPod, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
Some of my Latino friends joke that I’m an “honorary Hispanic" -- that makes me smile.
Growing up in Peru
It may be because as a teenager (mid 1970s), I lived in Lima, Peru.
My American mother grew up in Lima, and it only seemed natural to her that I’d one day know what her upbringing was like.
I attended high school there (and you thought chemistry was difficult in English!), played futbol and most importantly, jumped with two feet into the rhythms of a different culture.
I was a fish out of water, but not for long. My then-girlfriend and cultural ambassador, Magaly Messarina, gave this “gringo” some lessons in the Latin “ritmo” (rhythm).
Plus, you had to learn to dance. Not only to fit in, but to make the evening fun. Evening parties were very long affairs.
Peru had its political problems back then, so each night, there was a government-ordered curfew (toque de queda).
We danced toque to toque. The party would end with the curfew, shortly after sunrise.
Back to the USA.
When I came back to the U.S., things I was once blind to were all of a sudden visible.
Maybe it’s because I could now communicate in Spanish, but the soccer pitch in Orlando with mostly Puerto Rican kids didn’t seem intimidating any more.
When my friend Pilar invited me to a picnic and they were grilling salchicha (not quite a hot dog), it wasn’t something “weird.” After all, I’d been eating anticuchos (organ meat on stick).
Broadcasting
My first job as a professional broadcaster was in Lima. I worked for Radio del Pacifico. That wasn’t the initial plan. I returned to Lima in the early 1980s because someone I knew said he could help me get a job working in television.
Sometimes, you need to make sure everyone understands what you mean when you are speaking a second language.
I arrived in Lima, and a week went by. No sign of my friend. The next week, I get a call that my buddy’s waiting for my tools to arrive before he hooks me up.
“Tools?” I asked.
“Yes, tools. You want to learn to fix TVs don’t you?” he said.
Ay. Que idoima hablé cuando le dije que queria trabajar en television? (What language was I speaking when I told him I wanted to work in television?)
The radio job was something I found on my own. PHEW! Broadcasts were mostly in English to the British ex-pats in Lima.
In recent years, I’ve reported for Telemundo, our Spanish-language sister network. I’ve been told that I’m the first “reverse correspondent” at NBC. Telemundo reporters often contribute to TODAY and Nightly News. I’m the first non-Hispanic to go the other direction. During the first weeks of the Iraq war, I was a regular, reporting in Spanish with the Marines as they pushed north.
When Elian Gonzalez was taken by force in a Miami neighborhood, I reported the story in Spanish from inside the house as the “pool-reporter” for Telemundo, Univision and CNN Español.
Why now?
Now, to the story at hand: the Latin influence in American pop culture.
When producer Vivian Fel (Argentinian-American) and I teamed up and started asking questions, something clicked in my head. Maybe the reason Americans today are so accepting of “Spanglish” radio stations, even bilingual Broadway shows, like “In the Heights,” is because an entire generation in the U.S. grew up watching "Sesame Street" and "Dora the Explorer." Their children now watch "Handy Manny." Those bilingual shows not only expose kids to Hispanic cultures, but teach them Spanish.
Latin music star Gloria Estefan told me she heard a constant refrain when she first tried to take her music to a national audience: Tone it down.
She didn’t.
“Conga” (Sony/BMG) was a hit, in Ames, Iowa, and Duluth, Minn., just as it was in Miami, New York and Los Angeles.
And why did it work?
Estefan says she believes “it’s the drums.”
Her album, “Abriendo Puertas” (Opening Doors), is appropriately titled. Today the Latin beat is as popular in Asia and Europe as it is now in the U.S.
Which brings us to my iPod. Yes, Ozomatli is now on my iPod.
There’s one song that hits it best for me. “La Gallina.” Rooster. (Actually "La Gallina" means “hen,” but let’s not get technical, there’s a cock-a-doodle-do.)
When I lived in urban Lima, it was routine to hear the crow of roosters early in the morning. Here it is in a song. What a hoot.
Or as we used to say in Peru, “¡Que bestia!”
